...For the Love of Fine Words.
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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' - Discussion Questions

Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969), on the right, with Neal Cassady (1926 - 1968), on the left

He was simply a youth tremendously
excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he
wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay
no attention to him.

Sal Paradise has an
immensely tolerant, compassionate attitude to Dean Moriarty. To what extent, if
any, is this attitude altered by the end of the novel?

…I shambled after as I’ve been
doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me
are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a
commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding
like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight
pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’

In comparison with his
circle of friends, Sal comes across as relatively less eccentric than many of
them, and appears to have a more stable family life. But he’s generally
welcomed wherever he goes. Discuss his fascination with his hipster
acquaintances – the effect they have on him, and the effect he might have had
on them.

All my other friends were
‘intellectuals’…his criminality was not something that sulked and sneered; it
was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind,
and ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming…

The ‘other friends’
Kerouac refers to were, many of them, fellow Beat writers and poets who appear
in this book under various aliases. Some of them were Colombia students that
Kerouac had met when he was studying there. They were the disaffected
intelligentsia who had grown disillusioned with post-war America. Yet Dean, who
was based on the real-life Neal Cassady, represented something unique even to
this group. Kerouac’s tone when he speaks of Moriarty has a reverential accent
to it. Would you also agree that Moriarty is an American archetype – in his
unrestrained pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, no matter what the cost?

There was nothing clear about the
things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He
used the word ‘pure’ a great deal.

Many of the things Dean
Moriarty utters seem incoherent. Yet Cassady’s wife, Carolyn Cassady (Camille
in the book) says that Cassady was an intellectual match for Kerouac who could
hold his end of the conversation. What do you think? Is Moriarty a slightly
unhinged hobo, or an inspired poet/mystic?

…we all realized we were leaving confusion and
nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move. And we moved!

Why is being on the
move so vitally important to Sal and Dean? What are they looking for? Do they
ever succeed in leaving confusion and nonsense behind?

…for just a moment I had reached
the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step
across chronological time…

At several points in
the narrative, Dean speaks ecstatically of ‘knowing time’, and Sal appears to
have some transcendental experiences of his own. In Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve
Jobs’, an ex-girlfriend refers to the complicated Jobs as ‘an enlightened being
who is cruel’. We see both Dean and Sal indulging in substance abuse, petty
theft, promiscuity, and all manner of irresponsible and hurtful behavior. Yet,
there seems to be something genuine to their spiritual quest. Is morality
necessary for spiritual growth? What do you think?

I wished I were Joe…wishing I could
exchange worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America…There
was excitement and the air was filled with the vibration of really joyous life
that knows nothing of disappointment and ‘white sorrows’ and all that.

‘On the Road’ was published
in 1957, prior to the Civil Rights movement. Seen in that light, what is your
assessment of Sal’s view of the African American experience?

Kerouac frequently
alludes to jazz music in this novel. What do you think was the allure of jazz
for the Beat generation?

What’s your road, man? – holyboy
road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road
for anybody, anyhow…no matter where I live, my trunk’s always sticking out from
under my bed, I’m ready to leave or get thrown out. I’ve decided to leave
everything out of my hands…I’m cutting along in my life as it leads me.

Neal Cassady – the inspiration
for the fictional Dean Moriarty - survived an unstable childhood with an
alcoholic father; experienced frequent bouts of homelessness; was a juvenile
delinquent who was sent to reformatory school where he was allegedly molested
by an older mentor; and, was rumored to be bisexual. Does this background
information explain the elusive Moriarty any better? Does it impact your
impression of him in any way?

They had come down from the back
mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they
thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the
broken delusion of it. They didn’t know that a bomb had come that could crack
all our bridges and road and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as
they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way.

(i)Here, and elsewhere
in the book, is Sal romanticizing the lives of the destitute and disenfranchised?
Or, did the Beats, like the Hippies who came after them, see a deep-seated lack
behind the material prosperity of Western civilization?

(ii)The Beat
Generation lived in the shadow of an imminent nuclear threat. Discuss how this
fear of an apocalypse might have shaped their worldview, philosophy and
literature.

…we know what IT is and we know
TIME and we know that everything is really FINE…Now you just dig them in front.
They have worries, they’re counting the miles…how they’ll get there – and all
the time they’ll get there anyway, you see. But they’ll need to worry and
betray time with urgencies false and otherwise…

Living life by the seat
of your pants vs. the need for order and stability. Staying true to your
individuality and personal joy vs. accommodating social and moral obligations.
Spontaneity vs. rigidity. Experimentation vs. the straight and narrow.

One man’s notion of
being true to himself is another man’s idea of narcissistic impulse-chasing - are
joy, creativity and/or spirituality inherently antithetical to discipline and
self-restraint? Is it possible to strike a balance?